Why India’s ‘Adopt a Heritage’ programme needs a more enlightened approach

How many monuments will be under the charge of private companies and will their efforts take into account local requirements and national ideals?

One of the great things about old cities is that their age need not be culled from books and brochures, but is clearly discernible in their buildings. It doesn’t take much to see that places like Rome, Athens and Paris belong to another age. The views along the street, the perspective visible to a walker or a slow driver is invariably a clear and conscious allusion to history.

Not so with Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru. Mainly because the preservation of architectural history, and the wholesale value of a continuous streetscape is an entirely European idea, where it is seen as a crucial badge of cultural identity. But more so, because in India, architecture has no civic presence, and is conceived entirely as an emblem of personal pride. Its growth consequently is sporadic and episodic: a house here, a monument there, a government office elsewhere — buildings appear in the wild, a jungle of architectural and archaeological speculation. 

In the long parade of history, even Delhi’s past survives in the illusory seven cities, and in similarly unwilled randomness. For most city residents, they rarely form part of daily lived experience, but only remain in fanciful memorialising, to announce to the world that, yes, we are nuanced products of a long civic history. The recall is without heredity, without ancestral connection — Delhis that are so distant that their only evidence is archaeological and geological.

Certainly, it is difficult to deny the remarkable promise offered by monuments in enlarging the civic and cultural life for its residents. In European cities, churches, cathedrals, aqueducts, old palaces, even cemeteries, have been successively absorbed into the townscape in an active productive manner. In fact, there are remarkable examples of how cities have conserved their heritage and made it more accessible to the public.

In Rome, Italians attend Sunday mass in the 16th century Renaissance church of San Clemente, built on the remains of a 12th century medieval building, which in turn sits on the foundation of a second century basilica. In Paris, the more recent insertion of a glass pyramid in the plaza of the Louvre has increased the popularity of the 17th century museum four-fold, generating — through the unusual architectural juxtaposition — a greater interest in the art collections. Would the authorities ever consider a similar intrusion into, say, Delhi’s upcoming National Museum at South Block (see illustration) or the City Palace in Jaipur?

Revolving restaurant at the Taj

How do Indian cities view their relationship with monuments? A new government initiative, Adopt a Heritage, poses both interest and danger, given that conventional Indian attitudes to conservation are both rigidly preservationist or thoughtlessly liberal. One view wishes to retain the Taj Mahal in a way that if Shah Jahan were to wake up, he would find himself in familiar surroundings. The other view would be perfectly content with the installation of a plexiglass revolving restaurant in the Taj dome, and using the char bagh as a revenue generating wedding venue. Is there any possibility of reconciling these two extremes? 

The government seems to think so. The idea of the adoption initiative is two-fold. By allowing companies from the public sector and select private business houses to become ‘monument mitras’, the adopted landmark would supposedly be both scrupulously maintained and appropriately highlighted for tourism. So far, 66 monuments across India have come under the adoption scheme. These include the Konark Sun Temple, the Elephanta Caves and the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, among others. At Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb, a restaurant and a sound and light show have been proposed within the grounds of the mausoleum, including private dining and special events in the gardens. 

Threat of polarisation 

With 3,700 monuments under the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, how many will now be under the charge of private companies and how much transformation will they be made to bear? Will temples in South India at Pattadakkal and Badami be freshly landscaped and surrounded by new boundary walls, or will they be closed because they are too delicate and precious to be opened to tourism? Will companies consider seasonal restrictions to their new charges, or keep them open to private functions, such as conferences and fashion shows? Moreover, will the current attitude of religious polarisation also spread to cultural and heritage sites? 

Doubtless there is no better standard for restoration than the painstaking conservation of Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb, undertaken by the Aga Khan Trust. Equally, there is little to fault the government and local temple trusts in restoring several Hindu shrines and monuments. However, would the government spend equivalent effort in the revitalisation of the Ajmer Dargah as it did on the Varanasi corridor project? Could the Aga Khan Trust consider the restoration of Hindu temples in Himachal Pradesh, currently in desperate need of repair? Beyond self interest, heritage is of little concern to trusts, big corporations and governments. It will take great magnanimity to give culture and heritage the wider apolitical berth they deserve. 

Of course, the chances of converting Kerala’s Padmanabhapuram Palace into a dental collage, or Delhi’s Red Fort into a film city, are right now thankfully remote. If at all citizens are to benefit from these buildings, a more enlightened policy on reuse needs careful consideration, something that takes into account local requirements and national ideals. The truly innovative feature of future conservation will be to bring together the rarefied frame of history and contemporary life in ways that make them easily compatible. Like the Italians, we may find that an experience of origins is as important as the appreciation of an ongoing process. 

The writer is an architect.

Published - November 01, 2024 10:41 am IST